RCHacker blog

Hi my name is Marc and welcome to my website. It is all about software, hardware and anything related to radio controlled aircraft. I might even throw in anything else I might be interested in at the time. Follow me on Twitter or YouTube. Or get website updates via RSS.

This is not the aborted test of the 22nd of August. It is however some beautiful footage taken from a hexacopter. A great application, small, cheap, disposable and if made right unlikely to damage the rocket in the event of a collision. I really hope they use more of these to get better angles in the future.

Did you know that wind hitting a mountain range creates waves which reach many times higher than the mountain range itself.

Glider pilots have been using these mountain waves to break altitude records for many years, but this team plans to take it to the next level.

Their aim is to fly higher than 90,000ft. That is higher than the U2, even the SR-71.

Imagine a simple autonomous aircraft with the typical set of ardupilot sensors that could sniff out these waves to stay aloft, they could just about be disposable. Seriously the technology is already here.

The Mobius action camera does produce noise on the 433MHz band and 1.1 to 1.3 GHz. Although to prevent it interfering with your 433Mhz control system just move the Mobius action camera away from your antenna about a foot. You can also shield the camera in aluminium foil.

I found these two videos very interesting by fellow video blogger Veritasium. Not just opinion he has actually done research on Facebook and how it works in the grander scheme of advertising. Interesting to me because I have wasted time trying to reach followers on Facebook, so please in future interact with me on my Youtube channel.

From what I have seen the OpenPilot boards seems to be the cutting edge for multi-rotor (or anything else) control.

32bit, highly configurable and fast. The project is a labour of love and is under a Creative Commons non-commercial license. This is great but it makes the boards somewhat hard to get hold of. From the openpilot store you can commit kickstarter style to go really bleeding edge with the new Revolution (read up on it first) or wait for a batch of the proven CC3D. The other option is to build one yourself which I think I will attempt once I get to the limits of the KK2 capabilities. Mochaboy built his own and made this really great video:

To see how they perform in the hands of a top pilot check out Juz's channel. This is my favourite:

I have been very busy lately reviving my Engineering skills. My background is Aerospace and more so Software Engineering and during my studies we covered every branch of engineering including hardware design. It has been a few years since I worked as a software engineer, and even more since I did any hardware at university. After a number of years travelling and doing completely unrelated jobs. I am amazed how technology has progressed, including the software tools to make things happen. It seems we are in a brave new word where it is affordable to design and get made your own PCBs. Microcontrollers are amazingly cheap and powerful and with an Arduino and a bit of hacking it is possible to do re-flow soldering in a hacked toaster oven. Finally the internet: 95% full of crap but if you search for it you can learn anything.

While some of the RC technology out there is brilliant. FrSky, KK2, OpenPilot are a couple that come to mind. So much of it is just utter crap, cheaply made and full of bugs. There are many products where a bit of good engineering can make a huge difference. FPV gear is one.

So I want to work my ass off and get some products of my own out there. I have many ideas but I'm not going to promise them all at once.

My design philosophy will be: Not what I think you want or even what you think you want, but what I want. If you like it, great. If not tough.

If I go broke trying at least I will have some nice gear. :)

Very early days yet, but I will continue to share my progress on YouTube.

My first set of PCBs (the Switch) is apparently on its way. Unfortunately postage is far too slow and sometimes unreliable to Ecuador... :(